


Like That

by miss_begonia



Category: The OC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 01:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_begonia/pseuds/miss_begonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan takes out his engineering textbook and opens it to the chapter he’s supposed to be reading, but everything blurs together into a sea of numbers and letters, a dense soup of incomprehensibility. He can sense Seth lying on his bed, listening to his iPod and making gestures in the air with his hands, and he can’t concentrate on anything else.</p><p>He wishes Seth wasn’t quite so much like that, so…Seth Cohen-y.</p><p>He wishes he didn’t want him quite so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like That

Ryan picks up the folded dollar bills slipped under a dirty coffee mug and counts them, silently, mentally calculating how much he’s made tonight. A lot, he guesses, maybe close to three hundred. It’s almost nine-thirty and he feels like his arms are going to fall off, but at least he’s got some cash. He doesn’t know what happens to his money; even though he saves half of it the other half disappears in what feels like seconds. There’s gas, and food, and random pieces of clothing he’s always destroying, and he’ll be damned if he’ll accept the money the Cohens are always trying to push on him. They’re paying for him to be at UCLA, and that’s enough for him. Period.

Seth argues with him all the time about this, but Ryan isn’t backing down. Seth says Ryan makes him feel guilty, like he shouldn’t be mooching off the parental units when Ryan is so into being self-sufficient. Ryan argues he’s hardly self-sufficient, that even with his scholarships Sandy and Kirsten are shelling out plenty. Seth jokes about how Ryan should take advantage of it, that they’ve got nothing better to spend their money on.

Depending on his mood, he feels like laughing or like crying.

Because he knows that’s what everyone’s always expected of him. That he’ll take advantage. And Ryan doesn’t want to become what people like Caleb Nichol think he already is.

After he clears his last table he’s off, and he peels out of there in the Range Rover at high speed, wanting to channel the anxiety that is churning in his stomach into something physical. If he had a girlfriend he could go see her and they could have sex and he’d forget everything for a little while.

But Ryan doesn’t have a girlfriend, he has Seth. And that’s who he’s going home to tonight.

Usually this fact doesn’t make Ryan feel like he’s gotten food poisoning, but tonight he’s jittery because he promised Summer he’d tell Seth, like, ASAP. She called his cell during the last five minutes of his break in the afternoon, before he went back to work for what was supposed to be an hour and became five hours. Ryan doesn’t know how to say no.

“You’re such a wimp sometimes, Chino,” Summer whined. “You gotta tell him what you feel. Otherwise you’re just lying to him. That’s what it is. It’s a lie.”

(Ryan thinks: _Although she may be cute/She's just a substitute/Because you're the permanent one._ )

That hit Ryan hard, because if there’s one thing he hates more than anything, it’s lying. He’s had plenty of liars in his life – his mom, saying things’ll get better, his dad, promising to keep out of trouble, his brother, claiming he’d be there for him, always. Marissa, saying she’d stop drinking. Lindsey, saying she was going to stay. Theresa, lying about having lost the baby. If Ryan thinks about it too hard he feels his chest constrict and he wants to scream, or throw something, or punch someone. But he doesn’t do that anymore.

And he doesn’t want to lie to Seth. About anything.

So he’s going to tell him. He just has to figure out how.

***

When he gets back to Hedrick he’s surprised there’s no loud, whiny alt rock emanating from the room he shares with Seth, because Seth has been way into that stuff lately. Bands with names that don’t make sense, like the Shins and the Strokes and Modest Mouse. Ryan doesn’t ask why, because that answer could take approximately nine hours. No matter what the subject, Seth always has lots and lots of words at his disposal, and Ryan likes to pick and choose his Seth-diatribes. Not that he doesn’t like listening to Seth, because he does – it’s kind of calming, sometimes, for some strange reason. But there’s only so much angst he can take.

He pushes open the door and is about to proclaim loudly that people who go to restaurants are the devil, but he sees Seth is asleep, curled up into a little ball on his bed, his dark hair messy against his Spiderman sheets. He glances at his watch and sees that it’s almost eleven. Normally Seth would be up at this hour, but who knows when he went to sleep last night. Seth keeps strange and irregular hours. Ryan guesses his schedule of procrastination and comic-book obsessing must require great flexibility.

So Ryan thinks he won’t wake him. This can wait. It can wait until tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. But _shit,_ that’s Seth’s birthday. Ryan thinks maybe it’d be wrong to introduce such trauma into Seth’s general vicinity on that particular day.

Maybe he should wake him.

“Seth.”

Seth stirs a little, unfurling his long limbs so that he’s stretched out on the bed, but still quite asleep.

“Seth, wake _up,_ ” Ryan says, shaking him gently on the shoulder.

Seth makes a protesting noise, and mutters something that sounds like “Bilbo,” then opens his eyes.

“I need to ask you something,” Ryan says. Ryan knows he sounds nervous and this isn’t the right way to start this at all.

“What?” Seth murmurs, blinking rapidly and trying to wake up. Ryan thinks he looks adorable with his dark eyes wide and his hair all messy, sticking up in ten different directions.

In that moment, Ryan completely wimps out.

“Did Summer call?” he asks.

Seth gives him a blank look as he processes this question, then wrinkles his forehead in confusion. “Yeah, a few hours ago…Ryan, why are you talking to Summer? Is there something going on between you two, because I’d really rather you tell me now instead of years from now when you’re engaged and planning a family of Ryummer babies, you know? Because, dude, I’m not a jealous man, not really. Especially since it’s been, like, years since I – “

“Calm down, Seth. It’s nothing. Go back to sleep,” Ryan says, and gets up off the chair.

 _I’m such a dick,_ he thinks.

“Are you going out tonight?” Seth asks.

“It’s a Tuesday,” Ryan says, thinking how Seth really does have absolutely no concept of the outside world. He’d never know what time it was if he didn’t own a cell phone.

“Right.” Seth runs a hand through his hair and sighs.

“Don’t you have homework?” Ryan asks, curious. Ryan has been working his ass of for all of college, pulling all-nighters, conducting marathon study sessions, locking himself in tiny, brightly lit library rooms to force himself to concentrate. He never understood the necessity of caffeine until college. Sure, he drank coffee before, but that was just to wake up, not to _survive._

Seth never studies. Or at least Ryan never sees him study. But Seth gets good grades. He’s an English major, so he must write papers at some point. It’s like Seth has some secret second life that Ryan knows nothing about.

Ryan momentarily imagines Seth in a tight superhero costume – he’s wiry, so he’d be kind of Spider-man-esque. He banishes that thought from his head when he feels his face getting warm.

“I have homework, Ry, but here’s the thing,” Seth begins. Ryan rolls his eyes, knowing where this is going. “If I were to do my homework now, I would be breaking my streak, you see, because I’ve made a pact with myself this semester.”

“A pact,” Ryan deadpans.

“Yes, a _pact,_ dude. It’s a relaxation pact, because I decided that last semester I stressed myself out way too much and that _this_ semester I need to make a conscious effort to be better to myself.”

“Seth, all you did last semester was sleep,” Ryan intones, glaring at him.

“Ah, but you are mistaken, my friend,” Seth says. “True, I did spend an inordinate amount of time in my bed, but a lot of that time I was not, in fact, sleeping. I was meditating.”

Ryan wonders what Seth could possibly have to meditate on that consumes so much of his time. Ryan isn’t a big fan of sitting and thinking; usually his thoughts go places he’d rather they wouldn’t.

“If you were meditating why weren’t you more relaxed?” Ryan asks, curious.

“Because there were too many thoughts,” Seth answers, flopping over on the bed so he’s on his stomach and propping himself on his elbow. “I was overwhelmed.”

Ryan sighs and blows his bangs off his forehead, momentarily envying Seth’s mound of curls. When his hair grows out, he never looks shaggy, he just looks more…fluffy. “Well, I have homework to do,” Ryan tells him. “So you need to be quiet.”

Seth puts up his hands in a gesture of submission. “Quiet as a mouse, dude. Quieter. Silent. Mute. Taciturn.”

Ryan gives him a blank stare. Seth pulls his legs into his chest and seems to fold himself up until he almost disappears into his pillows.

Ryan takes out his engineering textbook and opens it to the chapter he’s supposed to be reading, but everything blurs together into a sea of numbers and letters, a dense soup of incomprehensibility. He can sense Seth lying on his bed, listening to his iPod and making gestures in the air with his hands, and he can’t concentrate on anything else.

He wishes Seth wasn’t quite so much _like that,_ so…Seth Cohen-y.

He wishes he didn’t want him quite so much.

***

The next day Ryan has the afternoon off, so he goes to the gym, thinking a good workout might help him release some of that tension he’s been holding inside, balled up in his stomach like a clenched fist. He’s working on his triceps when his cell rings. He considers not answering it, but then thinks it might be Seth, that he might need him for something.

(Ryan thinks: _When the lovin’ starts and the lights go down/And there’s not another living soul around/You can rule me ‘til the sun comes up/And you say that you love me._ )

It’s not. It’s Summer.

“Did you tell him?” she asks when he picks up, not bothering to say hello.

“Not yet,” Ryan says.

“I’m coming to meet you. Where are you?” she asks.

He tells her he’s at the Wooden Center, and she says she’ll be there in ten.

Summer lives off campus in an apartment with a couple of her former sorority sisters. She was really into the whole Greek thing freshman year, but then there was a party where one guy pushed her a little too hard, and bad things happened. Ryan remembers because she called him when she couldn’t reach Seth, and he came and pushed the guy into a wall, hard. Ryan doesn’t remember the guy’s name, just that he needed to become better acquainted with that wall.

Then he took her home and held her while she cried, her tears leaving little patches of wet on his t-shirt.

Ryan had certainly talked to Summer before that night, but if he had to pinpoint when he and Summer actually became friends, that would have been it. They’re not real flashy about it or anything, but Ryan talks to her. A lot. And when it comes to matters pertaining to Seth Cohen, he doesn’t talk to anyone else.

Summer trips into the gym wearing four-inch bright pink heels and a pink vinyl skirt that’s right out of Barbie’s wardrobe. She turns the head of more than a few guys as she makes her way over to Ryan. He takes some satisfaction in this, but then feels self-conscious when she actually gets there, afraid he’ll be sweaty or gross. He knows that if he is, Summer will let him know, because that’s just the kind of girl she is.

He stands up awkwardly and she hugs him, her hand lingering for a second on his bicep. She looks up at him and smiles appreciatively. “Chino,” she says, “nice work.”

He blushes a little and sits down, wiping off the bench-press with a towel and offering her a seat next to him. “Thanks.”

“So why aren’t you as tough as you look?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “All those muscles and you’re afraid of _Seth Cohen_?”

“Not afraid so much as – “ Ryan begins.

“You’re scared silly,” she says. “So stop being such a little bitch and _tell him._ ”

“I don’t know what to tell him,” Ryan says helplessly.

“Tell him you like him, dumbass,” Summer says, poking him in the chest. “That you like him _like that._ ”

“It just seems a little…I don’t know, strange, that all of a sudden I’m telling him this, you know? We’ve known each other for…”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Summer interrupts. “Live in the now, Chino. This is your chance. I know you’ve listened to all my crap about my stepmonster and my boy issues and everything, and I’m not saying I don’t like listening to you pine over Cohen, but if you don’t tell Seth about this then you’re never going to be happy. I mean that. Never.”

Ryan just hangs his head.

“I think I know what this is about,” Summer says. “You’ve still got that Chino inferiority complex. Like you’ll never be good enough.”

Ryan looks up at her with wide eyes, and Summer sighs, exasperated.

“Ryan!” she exclaims, punching him in the arm. Ryan winces. Summer only calls him by his real name when she’s really annoyed. “You’re good enough for Cohen, okay? You’re sweet. You’re hot. You’re his best friend. Cohen needs you, and he loves you. So. Just. Tell. Him!” She punctuates each word with a poke to his arm.

“Summer, no need to be so abusive!” he laughs, catching her arm in his hand and holding it away from him.

“You don’t make this happen by his birthday and I swear to god, you _will_ bring on a rage blackout,” Summer says, standing up so she can look down at him. “So be smart.”

“Will do,” Ryan says. “And thank you for your…unusual pep talk.”

Summer winks at him, then leans in to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Oh, and take a shower, Chino. Ew.”

And she walks away.

Ryan smiles.

***

At 7:30 am on Seth’s birthday Ryan wakes up to two different kinds of unpleasantness – first, a high-pitched man-boy singing something stupid about Sunday morning, and second by Seth, who chooses to exchange this musical atrocity for some other trendy rock band with a singer who sounds like he is on a lot of drugs. Normally Ryan is tolerant of Seth’s musical schizophrenia, but it is too damn early and he was up too damn late.

“Fucking hell, Seth, you have an iPod!” he groans.

He’s relieved a moment later when the music dissipates, and he guesses that Seth left. He feels bad for being so grumpy on Seth’s birthday, and vows to make it up later. Exactly how will have to be determined when he’s actually approaching being conscious.

Before his ten-thirty class he jumps in the shower. As the hot water runs over his aching arms and legs – he may have overdid it just a little at the gym – he thinks about this year, and last, and tries to pinpoint the moment when Seth became more than just a friend. The thing is, he can’t. There have been so many times – moments – when he looked at Seth and thought, _I am so damn lucky._ Because Seth may drive him crazy sometimes with his neuroses and over-energetic babble, but Ryan doesn’t know what he’d do without him. Seth is the best thing he never asked for, the friend he never thought he’d have.

That’s why it’s fucking impossible to buy him a birthday present. A CD, no matter who it’s of, doesn’t seem like quite enough for the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

Then something clicks in Ryan’s mind, and it’s almost as if he can feel the gears whirring. He jumps out of the shower, towels himself off, pulls on a pair of pants and frantically rifles through his desk until he finds the map. When he does it’s easy – for once in his life words come without him having to force them. Because suddenly he’s got so much to say.

***

That afternoon, after his classes are over, he calls Seth to tell him he’s got somewhere for them to go tonight. Seth seems excited, if a little…distant. Ryan can’t place his finger on it, but he tries to sound as enthusiastic and even as possible so as not to make Seth feel badly. Whatever happens tonight, whether it ends in the world’s biggest rejection or…god, what is the opposite of that?

Ryan feels very warm thinking about it.

Either way, he has a contingency plan. Summer has offered to let him stay at her apartment if Seth freaks. She was very gracious about it, too – for Summer, anyway.

“You can have the couch,” she told him. “But watch out for Alexa. She seriously wants in your pants, and you do not want a piece of that.”

Ryan really hopes this won’t be a night of rejection, leading to many sleepless hours contemplating a dismal future. Ryan has been studying engineering non-stop for the last two months and yes, that clearly indicates he needs to get laid, but more than that, he just wants something to be easy. To be right.

(Ryan thinks: _I want to know what love is/I want you to show me…_ )

He spends a few hours at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Brentwood buried in the textbook for one of his architecture classes, but mostly he spaces out, thoughts flying around in his head with no particular regard for logic or reason.

While he’s driving back to campus to pick Seth up for dinner, he flashes back to when he and Seth first arrived at UCLA. He had one of the most intimate conversations he’d ever had with Kirsten that day. They went to Ackerman for a pick-me-up in the form of an espresso after unloading Seth and Ryan’s twelve hundred boxes of crap into their postage-stamp sized dorm room. Ryan was silent, thinking about how he never thought he’d make it here, not ever, not even when he got the acceptance letter in the mail, when he started packing, when they finally unloaded that last box.

“I’m really going to miss you boys,” Kirsten said. “The house is going to seem so empty without you.”

“But you’ll have a clean, available poolhouse,” Ryan smirked. “Can’t beat that.”

“I don’t know, Ryan,” Kirsten said, giving him a sad smile. “That poolhouse will always be yours.”

Ryan blushes a little, staring into his coffee cup, avoiding Kirsten’s eyes.

“But, you know, I don’t worry,” she said. When he gave her a skeptical look, she backtracked. “Well, I don’t worry that much. Because I know you and Seth…you’ll take care of each other.” She shrugged. “It’s what you do.”

 _It’s what you do._

It really is that simple.

But Ryan is about to make it a whole lot more complicated.

(Ryan thinks: _To love you when you're right/Love you when you're wrong/Love you when you're weak/Love you when you're strong/Take you higher/  
When the world got you feelin’ low._)

Ryan blinks out of his reverie, becoming conscious of the rap music that is now blasting through the Range Rover. It’s Common, a CD Seth gave him. Sometimes Ryan feels like every piece of his life is somehow tied up with the neurotic, twitchy, hyperactive, ethereal entity that is Seth Cohen.

Who is now climbing into the car.

“You’re listening to the CD,” Seth comments.

“Yeah, because ‘I wanna rhyme like Common Sense,’” Ryan deadpans. It’s the first thing that comes into his head.

“And the Jay-Z?” Seth smiles widely, and Ryan feels his heart leap in his chest. He’d do anything for that smile. Anything. “See, I knew you’d come around. You’re a regular ghetto gansta.”

Ryan can’t imagine a title that would describe him less accurately, but he doesn’t care. “So Happy Birthday,” he says. “How does it feel to be twenty?”

“About the same way it felt to be nineteen,” Seth replies, “except that I can no longer use the excuse of being a teenager, since I have officially passed into my second decade.”

“I didn’t know you used that excuse,” Ryan says. “I thought your excuse was just that you’re a Cohen.”

“I notice you never use that excuse,” Seth snarks.

“Because I don’t need to,” Ryan says, the words coming out of his mouth for no good reason he can think of. “I always do the right thing.”

 _You are so very wrong right now,_ he thinks.

(Ryan thinks: _And if loving you is wrong/I don’t want to be right._ )

He knows Seth is looking at him, and more than anything, he wants to know what he’s thinking. Because all he can think about is how soft Seth’s lips look and how his hair is messy-curly and soft and how he only has thoughts like this around Seth – no other guys. Seth is it – the one, the only.

And that scares the shit out of him.

“You’re kind of quiet,” Ryan says, turning onto the street of the restaurant. “That’s very not Seth Cohen of you.”

“I’m being you today,” Seth says defiantly.

“Does that mean I get to be you?” Ryan asks.

“If you want to be,” Seth says. “But I can’t imagine why you would want to be me when – “

“—you do it so well?” Ryan finishes, smiling.

“Exactly,” Seth says, his voice a little uneven.

Ryan parks the car. “It’s this place,” Ryan says, gesturing to a Chinese restaurant called Happy Golden Garden. “It looks bad but it’s actually really good.”

“Hey, I trust you, dude,” Seth says, and Ryan flinches, just a little, because it doesn’t sound like Seth is talking about Oriental cuisine.

Or maybe Ryan is having issues distinguishing between subtext and text. He’s not the English major, after all.

When they get into the restaurant Seth sees the group gathered around a table in the corner. He does a barely perceptible double-take, but Ryan catches it. He realizes maybe he wasn’t exactly clear about who they would be dining with this evening. But it’s Seth’s birthday! Seth wouldn’t think they were dining alone, because that would be like they were on a…

Oh. Hmm.

Seth looks a little queasy.

Ryan swallows.

Since Seth is nervous, Ryan tries to ease the tension by joking about Seth’s sudden bizarre desire to be Ryan Atwood for a day. It works – Seth and Summer bicker, they all order food, and everyone divides neatly into conversational pairs. Seth is being quiet again, so Ryan tries his hand at babble. He’s not great at it – he certainly doesn’t possess Seth’s doctorate in nonsense-talk – but he manages something about engineering and equations giving him headaches and blah blah blah. Soon he doesn’t even know what he’s saying.

Seth’s not paying attention, either; he’s staring at him in a way that frankly makes Ryan feel like a museum exhibit. He knows it’s very third grade of him, but he punches Seth in the arm anyway.

Seth winces and snaps out of it. “What is up with you, man?” Ryan hisses. “You’re being weirder than usual tonight, and that’s saying something.”

“Can we talk?” Seth asks, his voice breaking on the last syllable.

Ryan nods, and they get up from the table and wander over to where the bathrooms are. Standing in the hallway, Ryan puts his hand on Seth’s shoulder and says, “Whatever it is, Seth, we can talk about it.”

Maybe Seth still has leftover Summer angst. Maybe his favorite minor X-man got killed off. Or maybe Seth is pondering the distant future and feels confused and alone and wants reassurance that he’s not just going to end up living in his parent’s house when he’s forty, playing PS2 and watching daytime television. Maybe he’s just sad, because sometimes Seth is like that – sad for no discernible reason.

But then Seth kisses him.

 _That_ Ryan would not have predicted.

He’s so surprised that at first he tenses, incredibly conscious of Seth’s body heat and the way he smells like cinnamon and tastes like toothpaste. And then something inside of him clicks into place, and he kisses Seth back, hard, thinking he wants Seth to know everything he hasn’t been able to say, to feel everything he can’t communicate with words. He opens his mouth and licks Seth’s lips. He can feel Seth breathe in, sharply, an incredibly sexy hiss.

His tongue brushes against Seth’s and he shudders, electricity shivering down his spine, but he wants more pressure, more touch, more of everything Seth is giving him in this moment.

When they break apart, Ryan nips at Seth’s lower lip, not wanting it to end.

Wanting to leave a mark.

“That was…” Ryan starts to say, but he trails off.

There are no words.

“I’m sorry,” Seth apologizes.

Ryan thinks he and Seth have spent way too much time being sorry. It’s overrated. It needs to stop.

He places a hand on Seth’s arm and pulls him forward and kisses him, whispering, “Don’t be sorry.”

Seth looks shell-shocked. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but can’t form words.

“We should go back,” Ryan says. “They’ll think we’re – “

“—making out?” Seth finishes.

Ryan half-smiles, and says, “I was going to say sick. They’ll think we’re sick.”

“But we’re not, right?” Seth asks, his eyes searching Ryan’s. “Right?”

Ryan laughs lightly, and takes Seth’s hand in his. “No, Seth. We’re not sick.” He holds it for a second longer than is just friendly and gives him a warm smile.

When they come back to the table, Summer steals his seat and Andy immediately launches into a rant that has something to do with nuclear physics. Ryan isn’t paying attention; he’s too busy watching Seth and Summer, who are engaged in an intense discussion across the table.

Seth seems infatuated with the tablecloth. In one very telling moment, however, he catches Ryan’s eye and Ryan knows that Summer’s blown his cover.

The remaining minutes of dinner tick by like hours, and Ryan picks at his moo shu, unable even to concentrate on eating. Kirsten produces a cake from somewhere, and Seth opens what seems like a million presents. It’s not until Seth rips open the last gift (Summer’s bi-annual boxers) and looks at Ryan expectantly that he realizes _he_ should have a present for him, too.

Which he left in their room, of course. He tells Seth this, and Seth’s eyes light up like a kid in a candy store.

(Ryan thinks: _It seems our lives have taken on a different kind of twist/Now that you have given me the perfect gift._ )

Before Ryan can even process what is happening, they’re in the car together. Seth seems to have been rendered mute, and Ryan decides Seth has taken this Ryan “impression” way too far.

“If this is weird for you,” Ryan says, “then we don’t have to. Do anything. I mean that. I don’t want you to feel pressure or obligation or anything or – “

“Ryan. Dude,” Seth interrupts. “You have no idea how wrong you are right now.” Ryan notices how Seth is doing that thing he does with his hands, twisting them together as if he’s channeling Mr. Burns. “You have no idea how long I’ve been thinking about…well, about how incredible you are and how you are pretty much my favorite person ever. And I – “ Seth stops, takes a deep breath, and continues. “I want you,” he murmurs, “Like nobody’s business.”

Ryan parks the car. He feels like he’s glowing. Maybe he’s just vibrating at a very high frequency, or…something. Stupid Summer.

They’re in their dorm room in less than a minute, and Ryan shuts the door a little too hard, wanting to close out the world as soon as possible. His eye catches on the stereo and he knows there’s one song he’s got to play.

 _So now I come to you  
With open arms  
Nothing to hide  
Believe what I say_

Seth is laughing. “It’s…” he begins.

“Don’t mess with Journey, Seth,” Ryan says, because honestly, Seth can educate him all he wants about emo and trip-hop and god knows what else; Ryan will always, always have a soft spot for Steve Perry.

 _So here I am  
With open arms  
Hoping you’ll see  
What your love means to me_

And then Ryan pushes Seth down onto his bed and kisses him, grasping his shoulders, running his fingertips over his bare arms and along his narrow wrists. Seth is so damn skinny. For a second, Ryan considers that maybe he needs to be gentler, that maybe he’ll hurt him.

Then he realizes the biggest mistake he ever made about Seth Cohen was underestimating his strength.

He moves his lips down to Seth’s neck, applying pressure to his pulse point with his tongue, enjoying how Seth gasps in surprise. He’s never been able to make someone melt like this before.

Then again, Seth isn’t really like any of the people Ryan has ever known…er…intimately.

Ryan reaches over to his nightstand and picks up a slender envelope. “I suppose you’ll be wanting that birthday present,” Ryan says, slipping it between Seth’s fingers.

Seth looks down at the envelope and up at Ryan with wide eyes and whispers, “It’s my birthday?”

Ryan chuckles. “Open it.”

Seth does, and he pulls out the map. That morning Ryan closed his eyes and let memories scroll through his mind like an old-fashioned film reel, everything he could think of that’s taken place in the last four incredible years. Everything’s there – Luke’s immortal welcoming words, the nightclub they got kicked out of when they made their first journey to “The L.A.”, Summer’s character-defining catch-phrase, Seth’s boat in its many incarnations, Kirsten’s admonishing exclamations.

Of course, there’s plenty of room for more.

Seth’s eyes draw over the page, and Ryan can tell he’s digesting it, absorbing it bit by bit. Seth laughs and says, “Thank you, Ryan.”

“You haven’t seen the best part,” Ryan says, then moves the map down in Seth’s hands so that he can see that way south in the Pacific there’s written in tiny letters “future destination of Ryan & Seth.”

It’s next to Tahiti, the island Seth’s been trying to reach since he met Ryan, since far before that. Because Ryan loves Seth’s dreams as much as his own, and he wants to be there when they become a reality.

Seth is _shaking,_ now, and Ryan takes the map from him before kissing him and lying down, wrapping his arms around Seth’s shoulders. Seth rests his head on Ryan’s shoulder, and Ryan can feel his tears seeping through the thin material of his t-shirt.

Ryan knows that if he could still cry, he would be now.

“It’s going to be okay, Seth,” Ryan whispers. “I’m here, okay? We’re here for each other. We’ll take care of each other.”

 _It’s what we do._

**Author's Note:**

> Song lyrics are from:  
> “Tracks of My Tears” – Smokey Robinson & the Miracles  
> “Say You Love Me” – Fleetwood Mac  
> “I Want To Know What Love Is” – Foreigner  
> “When You Really Love Someone” – Alicia Keys  
> “If Loving You is Wrong” – Joe  
> “The Gift” – Annie Lenox  
> and…duh… “Open Arms” – Journey


End file.
